


Left of the Dial

by electricchicken



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M, M/M, Skoobs is a character now, the iPod gets its own tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/electricchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Radio Abel station manager Jack Holden's boyfriend is exposed in the campus press for sleeping with his students, Sam Yao does what any good volunteer college radio station assistant would do: start a complicated revenge plot to bring <i>The Abel Citizen</i> to its knees. </p><p>(A College AU in which Sara Smith is a super sleuth, Maxine is a sexpert, New Canton is a terrible blind date, a lot of pot is smoked, and Eugene gets to do his best manic pixie dream girl impression.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left of the Dial

**Author's Note:**

> The problem with limited canon, is some times you're left with very odd things to invent. In this case, it's a first name for the sinister and still-mysterious Professor Van Ark. (We can't all be named Professor Professorson.) For the purposes of this fic, it's Lionel.
> 
> As usual, big ups to everyone in the Zombies, Run! tag on Tumblr who talked me back into this story when I'd talked myself out. For you guys, I would run a decoy mission any day.

_Are you with me, or are you leaving?_

_Are you argumentative?_

_You all want some true believin' — why'd you act so t-t-tenative?_

— Penny for your Thoughts, Joel Plaskett Emergency

 

"You," Sam says, thrusting the newspaper in Sara's face, "are a terrible person. Terrible. And thanks for giving us such a great head's up by the way."

Sara Smith — Abel University track star and, apparently, crusading investigative reporter — leans back from where she's been stretching on the edge of the bleachers, until her face is visible over the edge of the paper, and gives him a look. "Do I know you?"

"It's Sam." That gets him a blank look. "From Radio Abel?"

"Oh _them_ ," she gets to get feet, walks two paces to the left and sits down again, leaving Sam holding his arm out for no reason, copy of _The Abel Citizen_  fluttering uselessly in the 6 a.m. breeze. "Just because we're sharing resources now doesn't mean we're sharing scoops. You want the good copy, set your own reporters on it. Or would that interfere with playing hip hop records and staring at members of the freshman track team?"

Sam jerks his eyes back to her, and away from the dark haired girl with a '5' on the back of her threadbare t-shirt doing laps across the track field. And, okay, maybe he originally had ulterior motives for agreeing to do a bit for the noon news program about the upcoming track and field season, but all that's forgotten now in favour of... a different ulterior motive. Whatever. 

"It's not about scoops," he says, trying for disdainful and landing somewhere closer to sputtering. He tries to wave the paper in her face again, but she rolls to one side. "Do you not think, though, that it might be worth dropping us a note before you decide to ruin my boss' life?"

That makes her pause, and take the _Citizen_  out of his hand.

NOT FOR TEACHER, reads the top headline, in what Sam has to say seems an unnecessarily large font. Below that, there's: _Econ TA Van Ark gave As for BJs_.

"You know, I don't write those headlines," Sara says, and Sam glares at her. "Your boss is dating one of the girls?"

"My boss," Sam says, "is dating the economics TA. Which you might have known if your lot ever bothered to respond to my weekly data sharing emails. Seriously, are you even reading those?"

That first bit gets a wince out of her, at least. "Well, better she—"

"He."

"Oh Jesus," for a minute, she almost looks sorry. "Well, at least he knows now, when it's only six girls accusing the slimebag."

" _Only_ six?"

"Better than a dozen," she shrugs, and gets to her feet. 

"Seriously, the worst person ever," Sam calls after her, as she starts walking towards the track.

"The public has a right to know," she yells back over her shoulder. "Take it up with my editors."

"I hope you trip on a hurdle," he hollers back. Across the field,  Runner 5 looks over at him, confused and — ah, shit. She's running the hurdles now, isn't she? 

"Not you," he calls, before turning and racing back towards the radio building. Jack's not on campus most days until 9 a.m. That gives him 2.5 hours to figure out how to break the news to his supervisor before a stray copy of the paper does. 

Yeah, he really, really hopes someone else beats him to it.

\---

The phone goes off at 7 a.m., and Jack groans, pulls a pillow over his head, and waits the four rings it takes for the thing to go to voicemail.

There's a nice 10, maybe 20 second pause of silence, then the ringer starts up again and Jack sighs and fumbles it under the pillow as well to stare at the screen. 

_Radio Abel_ , says the call display. Hell.

"What," he croaks by way of greeting, "could possibly be going this badly on campus this early in the morning?"

"Jack," Sam says — yelps, really — into the phone. "I woke you up. Which means I'm the first person to call you this morning."

"If this is about that track and field hangup of yours can't it wait until after I get in? Or at least after coffee?" he should have known agreeing to let some third year engineering undergrad be his 'station assistant' or whatever would end like this. You let people volunteer to fill your coffee orders and run your soundboards twice, and suddenly it's all drunk dials and relationship drama. Some days this job is not worth it. "Can you call back later? I've got a meeting with my thesis adviser today I was hoping to be slightly better rested for."

"Oh shit," says Sam, like he hasn't been listening to anything Jack's said. Which wouldn't be that unusual, actually. "You haven't seen the  _Citizen_  for this week yet, by any chance?"

"Sam, I'm going to hang up now, okay?"

"No, no, wait," he's stammering. Maybe someone's spilled soda in the record room again. Used the station computers to download one of the bad kinds of porn? Used the station computers to make porn? 

Actually, that wouldn't be that surprising either.

"It's about Van Ark," Sam says, breaking through Jack's train of thought.

"You mean Lionel? He's not here. Said he wanted to get some marking done for class last night."

The noise that comes through the phone is not human. It doesn't even really sound living.

"Sam?"

"You're sitting down, right?"

A pause. Jack raises his eyebrows at no one, and hopes the weariness of his gaze is somehow carried over the airwaves.

"Right, right. It's just, I've got a headline to read you and, please don't shoot the messenger, okay?"

\---

Maxine and Paula show up at 9 a.m. with three cardboard beakers of tea from the corner shop that Jack normally doesn't admit to liking, a roll of Jaffa cakes, and the strained expressions of two people trying desperately not to say 'I told you so.'

"Oh dearie," Paula says, when he answers the door. "It's that bad?"

Jack shrugs, rearranges the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and shuffles back to the couch.

"Usually you put on pants when we come over," Maxine says, trying for a joke and wincing when it quite clearly misses. "Sam called us."

"Say it and get it over with," Jack sighs, sticking a hand out of his blanket cocoon for a tea. 

They exchange a guilty look, and Paula hands him the biscuits as well. 

"It's not that Lionel was all bad," she starts.

"No," Maxine cuts her off. "He was. Let's not sugarcoat this. We hated him."

"Hate him," Jack corrects, sipping at the tea. They must have raced over from the shop, because it's still nearly scalding, and he grimaces and drags his tongue over the roof of his mouth. "Can we stick to the present tense? He's not dead. Just, not answering my calls. Or my texts. Or the Facebook message I sent him. Or — I think there might've been an email in there too."

"He's awful," Maxine says, plonking herself down on the couch right up against his side. Paula folds up next to her, a hand spread out on her knee, and Jack's vision goes momentarily blurry. "He's bossy and rude to you and you told me once he never buys the condoms—"

"And he always shorts the tip when we go out together," Paula says. 

"Not to mention that he's been fucking," Maxine starts, then snaps her mouth shut abruptly. "Sorry. That was. Sorry."

Jack sets the tea down on an end table. Suddenly, he's not that thirsty. 

It's not as though the two of them ever got on with his boyfriend, he knows that. 

If nothing else, he's been producing Maxine's weirdly popular relationship and STI advice call-in show on Radio Abel long enough to get the hint. There are only so many times you can suggest an anonymous caller refer to their cheating bastard boyfriend as 'Lionel' before it becomes obvious what you're doing. 

But from his end it hadn't seemed so bad.

Certainly not cheating-on-your-partner-with-six-coeds bad, anyway. 

"There's not any chance the _Citizen_ 's wrong, is there?" he says, because once he's got this low there's no point in worrying about looking pathetic.

Maxine and Paula exchange another glance. 

"Have you seen the article?" Paula asks, finally. "There's — oh, there's no good way to say this. There's a photo gallery of cell phone pictures on the paper's website."

"They're pretty, um," Maxine looks like she's either struggling for a word or working not to throw up. "Conclusive. Explicitly so."

And if anything's a sign it's time to go back to bed, it's that, Jack decides. Maybe he can stay there the rest of the term. 

\--- 

_Three Weeks Later_

"We've got to get them back," Sam says, and promptly chokes on an inhale. "God, is it just me or is the weed on this campus getting worse all the time?"

From the other end of the couch, Skoobs gives him a look and sticks his hand out for the joint. "Those who don't pay don't get to complain about campus weed politics, Yao. And who's them? Who's we, for that matter?"

"The _Citizen_ ," he manages to get out between coughs. God, this stuff is practically all stems. If that's the best Skoobs can do, he can only imagine what the rest of the school is smoking. "For the dignity of the station, we — alright, then, _I_  — need to get them back."

"You're still doing that?" Skoobs takes a hit with no effort, and Sam feels a bit jealous. Also slightly hungry. Maybe there's still  leftover takeaway in the mini fridge. "Didn't your radio boss get fired for sleeping with students?"

"Are you ever not high when we talk?" Sam asks. They've been roommates three years now, and it's a question he still hasn't successfully answered. He's not normally very good with upper/lower class stuff, but it took about an hour of living with Skoobs (a.k.a. Sebastian Kurtis Nobel Jr.) to get a whiff of old money. Apparently having a knighthood in the family means never having to go to class and having just ridiculous access to weed. And if the former drives Sam bonkers, the latter nearly makes up for it.

"So what are you going to do?" Skoobs asks, kicking his feet up on the couch and pillowing his head on one arm. Which pretty much puts his feet in Sam's lap, thanks ever so much for asking, roommate. "Set a bunch of papers on fire?"

"Um, I guess that might work." He coughs again, and toys with one of the laces on Skoobs' hiking boots. They're covered in little skulls, which just seems unnecessarily creepy. For shoelaces. 

"Great plan."

"I'm still figuring it out, okay?" he twists a shoelace around his finger, tugging it out of its bow. Skoobs reaches over to slap at his hand, but passes the joint off as he does it. Best roommate, Sam decides. "You got better ideas?"

"Almost certainly," Skoobs strokes at the blonde fuzz on his chin he's still trying to convince people is a goatee. Or maybe it's a soul patch this week. "This reporter you keep ranting about, Sasha?"

"Sara."

"Uh huh. You think she's tight with the editors?"

"Not tight enough to read my memos," Sam grumbles. Grumbling. Stomachs. God, he really needs to investigate the takeaway situation. 

"You find out what her connections are, I might have something for you."

"Seriously?" That's unexpected to say the least. And Skoobs' eyes are actually sort of glittering now. Sam frowns. The guy normally doesn't get excited about anything, other than the odd two-for-one vaporizer sale at the local head shop. "Am I going to regret this?"

"Not as much as they are," Skoobs sort of leers at him for a moment, then looks thoughtful. "You want to order Chinese? I'm starving."

Yes, Sam decides. Best roommate.

\---

It turns out Sam doesn't have to go all that far to find a good source of _Citizen_  intel. 

Unfortunately, he does have to go to his 8 a.m. engineering lecture which he's been, let's say, opting out of the past week or so.

Month or so.

All term, or so.

It's not that Sam's actively trying to fail the course. It's just any time before 9 a.m. is too early by half to talk numbers, and the two times he did attend he could feel this black pit sort of thing opening up under his chair. Not sinking him, or anything. Just, looming there, all through the session, like he could drop through the floor at any moment but worse yet, he might not. 

He's not sure why this term is worse than all the others. School's never been good for him, if he's being honest. But the first two years weren't this bad. The pits were little and grey-ish back then. Of course, he didn't have the radio station back then. But Sam's been trying really hard for months now not to make that connection.

Sitting hunched up in the back of the lecture hall as their professor discusses something he can't even begin to fathom is maybe not the best time in the world to get into it, either.   

Instead, he scans across the room, looking for the right sandy head, bent low over a laptop computer and notebook. Chris McShell is typing furiously with one hand, and scribbling just as quick with the other. Sam feels a bit ill. Maybe he should've got coffee before coming in. 

It occurs to him when the lecture finally, mercifully lets out five minutes late that he could have stood just outside the hall doors and spared himself some agony. But at least he'll have something to use to fake his way through his next bi-monthly conversation with his father.

"McShell," he steps right into Chris' path when he comes up the stairs. Last, of course. So far as Sam knows, he's taking the class as some sort of elective, and yet he would be the one to stay behind to chat with the prof. "Can I talk to you?"

"I don't lend notes out," Chris says, sharply, and starts to edge past him.

"What? No, not about. I'm not here about the class—"

"Obviously," he cuts in, taking in Sam's hoodie and pyjama pants and lack of anything even remotely resembling pen and paper.

"It's about the campus paper," Sam says, quickly, before this turns into an argument. He's got enough of those to deal with on the subject as it is. "I hear you do their copy editing."

"As a favour. I'm not a personal editing service—"

"Okay, man, stop. I'm not asking for academic advice. Just, forget that we're even in school for a minute," Sam says, then rushes on before Chris can make whatever smart comment is clearly firming up in his head. "I just wanted to know if you knew Sara Smith, that reporter?"

"A bit," Chris' shoulders relax, and he's finally stopped looking for an exit through Sam, which must be a good sign. "Why?"

"I volunteer at Radio Abel," Sam says, smooth as he can, "we're thinking about asking her to come do some guest spots on her big exposé from a couple weeks ago. Maybe give some citizen journalist pointers. Just wondering if you thought she'd be receptive."

"She might?" Chris shifts what looks like three texts and a laptop in his arms — which is terrifying, given Sam's pretty sure he's also got a full backpack on. "She doesn't work from the office much. Doesn't really talk to anyone else, so far as I can tell, except when she shows up to drop off her latest scoop. And she gets terrible and cranky when you try to correct her comma splices." 

"Rough, man," Sam says, making a note to Google 'comma splice' some time. That's some ninja-sounding punctuation, there. "She must be really tight with the editors to get away with that."

"Not really, I don't think," Chris shrugs. "If she weren't an evil investigative fiend, I think they'd probably have shut her out by now. She hasn't come to an editorial meeting all year, and her scoops always throw off our production schedules for weeks after."

He says it all pleasant, but Sam can see the steel in his eyes. Those must have been some amazing, comma fuelled rows. 

"Well, no harm in asking, right?" he says. "Anyway, got to run. Station business. Thanks for your help."

"Sam," this time it's Chris calling out after him, which is a bit weird, actually. "You really ought to come to class, you know. You might like it."

"Yeah, maybe" he says over his shoulder, and this time the lie falls absolutely flat.

\---

**_TO SKOOBS 9:40 a.m._ ** _is it bad or good if she's got no connxns?_

_**TO SAM 9:42 a.m.**_ _EXCELLENT. MUA HA HA HA_

_**TO SKOOBS 9:44 a.m.**_ _...creepy_

_**TO SKOOBS 9:44 a.m.**_ _so creepy_

**_TO SKOOBS 9:45 a.m._ ** _gonna get a coffee. you want anything?_

\---

The Township isn't the worse bar in the area, going by the cheap/mostly-not-shady matrix used by most uni students. But it is far enough off campus that it's rare to see anyone below graduate level in there, and rarer still to see anyone from campus at all on a Tuesday night. Which is the only reason Jack agrees to meet there at all. 

That, and he's run out of whiskey at home. Actually, never mind whiskey, he's run out of pretty much all alcohol. Even that terrible Midori stuff one of Lionel's friends brought over for some party ages ago that doesn't mix with anything. Desperate times, and all.

Paula must be working late, because Maxine's in the booth by herself when he gets there. Unless she's trying to keep the whole perfect, happy couple act to a minimum for the moment. Which is a nice effort if it's the case, but he actually quite likes Paula.

He slides in across the way from her and takes a long drink from the pint already set out for him, in an effort to ignore the pained look she's giving him. 

"Jack," she says, in the voice he imagines she normally saves for the parts of med school where they practice giving out the bad test results. 

"Yeah, I know." On the plus, he's actually bothered to shower for this outing. Though he may have counteracted that by not shaving and putting on jeans and a shirt that have been on his floor since the day Sam called him. It might have also been worth it to brush his hair. Ah well. 

She gives him two more sips in silence, the draws a breath and launches in. "You need to come back to campus. The radio station's a disaster zone without you. The record room's a mess, I think someone is making porn in the staff lounge after hours, and Sam's sweet but he's not good at screening callers as you are."

"Knew it would eventually come down to porn," Jack says, absently, staring into the bottom of the pint glass. 

"It's been more than three weeks, Jack," Maxine says. "I'm worried, Paula's worried. Your sister called me yesterday, that's how worried everyone is about you. And she's still mad at me about the—"

"Yeah, I remember matriculation," Jack says, putting up a hand to stop her talking. There's terrible situations, and then there's scorched earth, take no prisoners, let's-never-speak-of-this, not-even-drunk terrible. "Let's not rehash the whole cheetah incident again, right?"

"The station board's been looking the other way for you, but they're going to have to replace you if you don't come back by the end of the month," Maxine says, clearly happy to switch the subject. "You lose this, you go back to marking papers and lecturing undergrads. And I've seen how you get. Freshman essays give you crazy eyes."

"I'm not sure I'm coming back," he runs a finger around the rim of the glass, still staring down into the beer. Cloudy, brown, probably a metaphor in that somewhere, right? He's the one with the literature degree. He ought to know. "That is, I'm thinking it might be time to transfer."

"Jack," she starts.

"It's not like I have to be here now. _He_  was the one with the fantastic supervisor and the great program. Not like there's nowhere else on the planet that offers graduate studies in British Lit. And, I," his voice wobbles a bit and he bites hard at the inside of his cheek. "Just, what if someone wants to talk about it? I can't do that."

On the other side of the table, Maxine narrows her eyes. "No."

"No?"

"No."

"No what?"

"You love your program. And more than that, you love that damn radio station," she reaches out, like she's going to put a hand on his arm, then smacks him in the shoulder instead. "Van Ark does not get to chase you off — did you know Sam slept in the station office three nights this week?"

"Ow — wait, why?"

"The late night girl went on some sort of LSD bender, 'for class,'" Maxine says, making little finger quotes. "And no one could find the contact numbers for any of the other DJs to fill in on that garbage heap you call a desk. That was the first night. Now, I think he's just scared to leave."

Oh, Sam. He's not going to feel guilty. He's not. 

Hell.

"I need more beer," he says, nearly rolling out of the booth. 

He orders Maxine another round as well, just to be nice, then slumps against the bar while the server goes to pour, trying to make it look like he's crossing his arms on the counter top, and less like he's digging his fingers into his biceps hard enough to leave red marks under the fabric of his hooded sweatshirt. There's movement in front of him, and he looks up to see the bartender set down a shot glass next to the pints and pour out a measure of something amber coloured. Whiskey, and not bottom shelf stuff either.

"I didn't order that." And since there's no reason to think the station's been paying his stipend for the last three weeks, it's almost certainly more than he can afford right now. Which, great, more things to think about. 

"I know." The accent is American-ish, but without Maxine's Eastern Seaboard twang. A bit flatter, a bit softer. Jack's never been good at placing those things, but he's pretty sure he's at least got the right continent.

"On the house," The bartender pushes the glass towards him, with an encouraging smile. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it looks like you need it."

"Thanks," Jack says, and knocks it back. Yeah, he was right, that is the good stuff. "Seriously, thanks."

"Yeah, no problem," another smile, maybe a little awkward around the edges. "Whatever it is, I hope it all works out?"

"If not, there's always more alcohol," Jack says, solemn, and the bartender laughs and ducks his head. 

"Yeah, well, I'll be here if you need me."

"Good to know."

When he carries the drinks back over, Maxine is giving him her examination room face. "He was cute."

"Was he?" 

"He was. Your type, too, before you started dating Captain Beefcake. You didn't notice?"

He didn't, and that's probably an issue, but he really doesn't have room on his plate to care about anything else at this point. "What do you mean, Beefcake? Just because I dated someone with a few more muscles than you like—"

"His arms were bigger around than your legs," Maxine says. "It was weird. And, hey, you past-tensed."

"I don't know what that means," this seems like a good moment to put away a quarter of a pint at once, and Jack does his best to rise to the occasion.

"You said 'dated,'" this time, when she reaches across the table it actually is for an arm pat. "Baby steps. Now will you please come to campus tomorrow? Just for a bit? For Sam?"

She would know to play the Sam card. Of course she would.

"A couple hours. I can't promise more."

"Sold," Maxine says, and clinks her glass against his.

\---

"Oh thank God you're back," Sam says in a rush, when Jack walks into the radio room the next morning. For a minute, he's sure Sam's going to fling himself at him, but he jolts to a halt about half a foot out and stays there, staring at him wide-eyed. "I think your 3 p.m. slot's empty again. Maggie's bailed for good this time. Someone about boyfriends and papers and moving off campus. And we're out of copy paper and someone poured energy drink on one of the plants by the front entrance. And—"

"Sam," Jack says, eyeing him. "Have you been to class at all while I was gone?"

Sam's mouth snaps shut, and the carpet suddenly becomes very interesting. "Some of them."

"Out," he snaps. "Go home, sleep, do your homework, go to a lecture, eat a vegetable maybe."

"But—"

"You're benched. Two days. Argue it, and I'm going to make you turn in all your lecture notes as proof of attendance for a month, got it?"

"Unfair," Sam grumbles, but he's still half smiling. "I'm glad you're back."

_That makes one of us_ , Jack thinks.

\---

He might be banished from Radio Abel for a few days, but at least Sam's finally got some time to put Skoobs' plan into action. Once he'd had it broken down for him, the whole thing had been surprisingly simple. If weird. 

Make that super weird. Sam's still not sure he actually believes half of what his roommate's told him. But then again, if even half of it is true, it should be enough for what they've got in mind. 

That being said, he's still a bit freaked out by how into all of this Skoobs is. He knows that his roommate is technically some sort of business major, but that Power Point presentation he'd made about the whole thing might have been a little much. The last time he put this much effort into anything, it was getting into a 25 and over club on a weekend trip to Glasgow, and even then that just mostly involved wearing suits and bribing people.

On the plus side, being stuck in the station office the last week left him plenty of time to do the groundwork, and the first step's the sort of thing he can do on the way back to the dorms. He can even stop for coffee when he's done. It's nearly 9 a.m. already, after all. Probably too late to get to any classes today.

The student fitness centre's usually pretty empty this time of day. Too many people with morning classes, and all the keeners have gone and left by 7 a.m. But a few days of loitering around the athletic field, and he's noticed Sara Smith seems to enjoy having most of the equipment to herself. He's also noticed she favours a camo gym bag, which doesn't hurt either.

He swipes in with his student ID, the girl behind the counter barely looking up from where she's surfing Facebook on the centre computer. The change rooms are just down the hall, off the main gym area, and if he cranes his head right he can see Sara's at the far end of the room, on some sort of machine with a bunch of pulleys and weights. Sam has no idea what it could possibly be for.

He glances round, trying to keep from moving his head too much. There's a couple guys in the free weight section, a few people on the treadmills. But the weight guys look pretty absorbed, and the treadmills point out towards the windows, giving the runners a view of the quad below, so he's clear there too. 

One more deep breath for luck, and he crosses his fingers and slips into the girls' locker room.

Empty. Thank god.

Unfortunately, no one's left their bag out, and Sam stares at the wall of identical lockers and swears. 

"Okay, Yao, think," he mutters to himself, jogging up and down the rows of lockers. Sara's here most every day. She'd have a permanent locker, not one of the plug-in-a-pound-and-go types that most people are using. One of the ones with a permanent padlock on it. 

Maybe the one with the permanent padlock with a camouflage dial? He skids to a halt, and tries to peer through the slats. That doesn't work, nor does trying the same thing with the flashlight app on his phone. But he can't have much time, and if he gets it wrong, so be it. Might still work out. Or he can do a bit more research and try again.

The note's been stuffed in his pocket for a couple days now, and it's definitely gotten wrinkled. But that probably helps, right? Wrinkled is good. He shoves it through the slats, and turns on his heel. Better to get out fast. 

He's rounding the lockers just before the changing room doorway when someone else steps in. A dark-haired someone else, wearing some awfully familiar gym kit.

"This... looks really bad, doesn't it?" Sam asks Runner 5 with a wince.

"Yeah."

"I'm just going to go now. And, maybe we can pretend this never happened? Yeah, that sounds good. See you round. Sorry, by the way. Sorry."

She watches him slip past her with raised eyebrows and a faint sort of smirk and it is not fair how attractive she is even when Sam's face is burning and he's so embarrassed it's a little difficult to see straight. 

_i hate my life_  he texts Skoobs on the way out of the centre. 

_Hate ur life too_ , comes back, followed quickly by, _Hey can u get me a latte?_

\---

**TO:** sam.yao@abel.ac.uk

**FROM:** j.holden@abel.ac.uk

**SUBJECT:** What is 'Project Greenshoot?'

> ...and why did you send eight emails about it from the office account to someone called Netrophil?

**TO:** j.holden@abel.ac.uk

**FROM:** sam.yao@abel.ac.uk

**SUBJECT:** RE: What is 'Project Greenshoot?'

> just a thing i'm working on. experimental dj collective or something. jody's looking for new music for her live sets program. don't delete anything!!!! 
> 
> -S.

\---

It's not until she's zipping up her bag and getting ready to leave that Sara notices the crumpled piece of paper on the floor in front of her locker.

It's plain copy paper, a bit coffee stained from the looks of it, folded into fours. It can't possibly have been there when she got to the gym. She's never kept school stuff in here, and it's not like the women's change room is a prime area for flyering. 

"What the fuck," she says to no one, and stuffs it into the bag along with everything else.

\---

"Morning Sam," Sara says, sidling up to him the next morning as he's sitting on the bleachers, half-watching practice, half trying to catch up on two weeks of missed French classes. He's not good at parlez vous-ing the Francais either, but the class never makes him want to die inside so he might as well try not to fail it hopelessly.

One out of half a dozen isn't bad, right?

"Oh, so you remember me now?" he says, and the bit of a smile she has on goes frosty.

"You didn't happen to put something in my gym locker the other day, did you?"

_Steady, Yao, you've practised for this_. "Sara, if another subject of your so-called investigative journalism has decided to stink bomb your personal things, it's none of my doing."

"Nothing like a note? An anonymous note?" she leans in, over his textbook, and peers at him. "What is Project Greenshoot, Sam?"

For a second, there's a flood of panic, and he can feel his eyes go wide, the blood go out of his face. Just for a second, though. Then he slams his textbook down onto the bleacher, loud and hard enough to make her jump back.

"Oh, so we're nobodys when you're sitting on a story, but it's nothing for you to piggyback on our scoops, is that it?"

"You have scoops all of a sudden? At Radio Abel?"

And maybe it's just that it's been a long three and a half weeks with Jack gone, or — or maybe it's something else, all of it, school and his dad and everything Sam's doing his level best to bury all the time, that opens up a well of pure, white hot rage in him, just waiting to be tapped into. 

"Step off," it comes out in a hard snarl, like Sam didn't even know he could sound. Like he hadn't realized he'd wanted to sound. "You think you're so much cleverer than we are, don't you? Just because your words go down on bits of paper and sometimes we play pop songs? Oh, we have a bit of fun, so it must be frivolous. Couldn't possibly matter to anyone."

"Hey now," she starts, but Sam barely hears her.

"Project Greenshoot's ours to break. Stay out of it," he glares at her. "You only get one thing of Jack's to sabotage per term. You're done with us now."

"Jack's the one with the perving boyfriend?" she asks, and actually takes a half step back again at the look he throws her. "Jesus, you'd think you were the one who got cheated on."

"I still really actively dislike you," Sam says, trying to reel it back in before he actually tries to murder her with the French book. 

"And I still don't care that much." She tilts her head to the side a bit, watching him. "So, you don't know anything about the note?"

"What note?" It's not entirely a lie. He's so worked up, it takes a few moments to remember there's actually something at play here. 

"Fine, you win this round, Sam," she says, shaking her head and backing off. 

"Let's not do other rounds," he calls after her, but it's not as convincing as before. He feels... a little drained, all of a sudden. Maybe time for another coffee, before he moves on to the active verbs. 

\---

"You're not serious," Jack says into the mic, flicking a switch so his voice carries into Maxine's studio, but doesn't cut into the music broadcast winding down on the Radio Abel airwaves.

"I am," she adjusts her headset and nods at him through the pane of glass separating Jack's control boards from her recording area. "I'm not saying he's perfect boyfriend material, but Canton's nice enough, and it would be good for you to get back on the horse."

"Not-actually-a-doctor Myers, are you prescribing me a one night stand?"

She gives him a thumbs up and Jack sighs. "Three minute warning."

"Just have a drink with him this weekend," she says. "Nothing serious. You talk a little, your drink some beer, you—"

"Get back on the horse?" 

"Do you want me to say it? Have sex with him. It'll probably be fun," she shrugs. "You're allowed to distract yourself. You can distract yourself twice if you like, even."

"Why do we let you give advice to undergrads again?" he mutters, pulling up the taped into for Unprofessional Medical Advice and getting it ready to feed in once the last song plays down. 

"Because I know 30 interesting facts about condoms and can say both 'herpes' and 'fisting ' on the air with a straight face," Maxine shoots back. 

"I guess we did set the bar rather high," he says thoughtfully. "One minute to air."

"So I can tell him you're good for Saturday night?" she asks.

"Whatever," Jack says with an eye roll, and launches into their segment.

\---

Canton Newhouse is blonde and square jawed, with one of those blandly pleasant faces Jack has trouble forming an opinion on, positive or negative. In his sports coat and khakis, he's also ridiculously over dressed for a drink at the Township. Or possibly, Jack thinks, glancing down at his battered trainers and jeans with a rip in one knee, he's the one not making enough of an effort.

They take a table in the back corner, Jack nodding at the bartender from last time as they go past. 

"You want a drink?" Canton asks, which is actually a pleasant surprise. Lionel was never much for buying rounds. 

"Just a pint of something," he nods, dropping into a chair. "Whatever you're having."

"Not much of a beer drinker, actually," Canton says, a little sheepish. "Was thinking about gin."

"Gin it is," after three weeks of drinking everything in the apartment, he finds he's not all that picky about alcohol. And at least out here in civilization the bartender's not likely to end up mixing whatever he has with flat orange soda. That little experiment hadn't ended well.

"So, you're one of Maxine's classmates, then?" he asks, as Canton sets a drink in front of him a few minutes later. "Stitching wounds and soothing the fevered brow and all that noble doctoring stuff?"

"Something like that, yeah," he sort of smiles at Jack, and maybe there is something to this horse thing. God, he needs a better metaphor for getting laid, stat. "And you two, um, do some sort of radio thing?"

"Unprofessional Medical Advice," Jack says with a grin and a bit of an eyebrow wiggle. "How to ask out that cute boy in your freshman comp class, and what to do with him afterwards. Or, as Maxine likes to refer to it, 'everything you wanted to know about dental dams, including what the hell are they for?'"

"That's," Canton just sort of stares at him. "Interesting."

"You've not heard it?" It's not conceited to ask. Maxine's been insanely popular on campus, ever since she did that segment on how to do S&M scenes in your dorm room without creeping out your roommates back in their first year of grad school. Sure, half the questions they get these days are probably faked, but there's no one else Jack would trust to answer a question about scuba gear fetishes with both empathy and enough humour to make his sides hurt when he goes home for the night. 

"I'm not really a radio person."

That's fair, he supposes. Radio Abel's barely available once you get three blocks off campus, unless the wind's blowing the right way. It's not surprising it doesn't hold more sway with busy would-be medical professionals. 

"What do you listen to, then?" he asks, because music is probably a safer topic than Maxine's ideas about sex ed anyway. "Podcasts? Or are you more of an album type of guy?"

The look Canton gives him is a bit blank. Worryingly so. "I tune into the BBC every so often for the news. But I mostly do that online these days."

"But, like, musically," Jack presses. "Do you like indie stuff? Folk? Country? Classical? If it's pop stuff, that's nothing to be ashamed of. The entire population of British teenagers can't be wrong, right?"  

"I guess I like that one song about hotels in California," Canton says, eventually. "They play it at the hospital sometimes, in the waiting room."

"You mean, um, Hotel California?" There's a faint ringing in his ears, and when he sets his drink back on the table there's barely two sips left.

"Yeah, that's it. Nice little tune."

 "So, classic rock's your thing, then?" That's not so bad. A bit predictable, but they might be able to find common ground over the Stones. Maybe he'd be receptive to some glam rock. 

"Not really," Canton shrugs. "Just like the song. Music's a little — well, it's a bit silly, don't you think? I mean, it's not exactly life or death, the way some people act like it is."

"I think," Jack says, voice sounding distant in his ears, "I think I'm going to have another drink. You want another drink? Yeah, you want another drink. Drinks for everyone. Drinks."

\---

Over the next four drinks Jack learns that Canton likes non fiction books about 19th century British military operations, favours the Conservative Party, not-so-secretly wants to be a Member for Parliament some day, and doesn't own a television.

And likes songs about hotels in California.

Hotels. In. California. 

God, Jack is going to murder Maxine the next time he sees her. 

"Well, I think it's time for another," he says, setting his glass down with a little too much force and rattling the table. Across the room the bartender catches his eye and raises an empty glass at him. Jack nods, and beckons him over. 

Canton, who's still only a few sips into his latest, raises his eyebrows and gives him a sly smile. "Trying to get me drunk, are you?"

"Trying to get me drunk," Jack says without thinking, and Canton's smile freezes and falls off his face.

"Wouldn't think your standards were so high," he snaps, and Jack goes cold inside.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"May not listen to your stupid station, but I read the _Citizen_. If you were this much of a prick before, no wonder that fellow of yours was dipping into the class lists."

It's like someone's come and kicked him in the stomach. And, God, everyone knows, don't they? Everyone on the entire bloody campus knows. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says, and hates how weak it comes out.

"No, I think I do," Canton's face is screwed up and going red and Jack's not sure how he ever found him even mildly good looking. "Saw the same photos everyone else did. Looked like he was having fun without you."

There's a million things going through his head that he could say to that, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. He tries again, and there's just no getting round the lump he can feel rising in his throat. He shoves his chair back hard, wobbles to his feet — shit, the drinks have kicked in more than he thought — and lurches round to find himself staring into wide blue eyes.

"Oh shit," he gets out, before he tumbles straight into the bartender, taking them both over in a heap of limbs and breaking glass. His flailing foot kicks at the chair, and it comes down on top of them both. 

Around them, the bar goes deadly quiet. Jack can hear his heart pounding in his ears, smell gin fumes rising from the pool of liquid spread out around them on the floor, feel the rapid rise and fall of the bartender's chest under his own. He looks down. Messy brown hair, blues eyes still saucer-big with surprise, a wide, generous-looking sort of mouth, lips just slightly parted. 

Oh hell, Maxine was right. He's gorgeous.  

"Oh god," he scrambles up to his knees, pushing the chair off them, glass crunching as he moves. "I am so, so, so sorry."

"What," the bartender starts, then shakes his head, scrubbing a hand through his hair (damp around the ends from the gin, Jack notices, with more beading down his neck and into a soaked t-shirt). "No, that — that was probably at least half my fault." 

"I'll pay for that," his face is burning, and he can't bring himself to turn around and see if Canton's still watching. He eases back to his feet, trying to keep from putting his palms down in the glass shards, then extends a hand out. "That was really. I can't even. Just, sorry, again."

"Seriously, no worries," the bartender says with a bit of a laugh. His palm is slippery and slick against Jack's, and who would've thought two little glasses of liquid could do so much damage? 

He gets him pulled about halfway up when the laughter cuts off, and the bartender's face goes pale. The only thing that saves them both from ending up on the floor again is that he falls forward this time, against Jack's chest, hands coming up to scrabble at Jack's shoulders for balance.

"Ow, fuck, sorry," he tries to push himself back, then hisses again, lifting a foot off the floor. 

"Here," Jack gets his hands under his arms, helps him manoeuvre around the table into Canton's vacant seat. Must have run off when he was distracted, which he wouldn't care about at all, except that probably means it's up to him to settle the whole tab. "What's hurting?"

"Ankle. I think," he makes a face. "Guess I hit it funny going down."

"Broken?" Jack asks, and he is really, really, starting to hate tonight.

"I don't—" the bartender starts, only to be cut off as a small, curly haired woman hurtles out of the Township kitchen to shove Jack out of the way.

"What's going on out here?" 

"Janine, it's cool," the bartender's still grimacing, which doesn't exactly lend credence to the statement. "Just a slight collision." 

"Do you want me to get a mop?" Jack blurts and oh, God, he is still so, so drunk. "I should probably clean this up."

The woman, Janine, ignores him, crouching down in front of the bartender and slipping off his shoe. When she speaks, it's all business, as though drunken louts accidentally assault the staff all the time at the Township. Which could be possible, now that he thinks of it. Hell, maybe that's why no one from school comes here most weeknights. 

 "Flex you toes for me?" she says, than tuts under her breath. "Right, that's probably broken. I'm clocking you out and calling you a cab."

Yes, Jack decides. He hates everything right now. 

"I don't think it's that bad," the bartender protests, then winces when Janine puts a bit of pressure on his ankle. 

"You're getting an x-ray. No arguing. Now sit still while I get someone sober," she throws a scowl in Jack's direction, "to clean this up. No sense you getting cut up too."

"So, so sorry," Jack says again. 

"It's fine," he's still staring down at his foot in dismay, and Jack has a flash of drunken inspiration.

"Let me come with you, okay?" he says. "Just to make sure you get to A and E safe, and then if you'd rather I never speak to you again I can probably do that. Actually, I'm assuming your boss is never going to let me back in here, so that should be pretty easy."

"You don't have to do that," the bartender says, but when he looks up there's something in his expression that gives Jack the courage to push it.

"It's nothing. At the very least, I think I owe you a couple of minutes as a human crutch."

They stare at each other for a second, then the bartender seems to settle something with himself and nods, extending a hand. "Thanks for that. I'm Eugene, by the way."

"Jack."

"Nice to meet you," Eugene says with a wry smile. "Sort of."

\---

"I guess I ruined your date tonight, didn't I?" Eugene asks, as Jack watches the minute hand creep its way around the clock in the Accident and Emergency waiting room. He's sitting sideways on a row of chairs, bad ankle propped up and good foot tapping an unsteady beat on the floor, head tilted against the salmon-coloured drywall. God, hospitals are awful. "That was a date, right?"

"Ish," Jack shrugs and leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees. The cab ride's done a bit to sober him up, but he's still slightly blurry around the edges. "If he hadn't run off, I would have. Was going to, when he beat me to it."

"That bad?"

"His favourite music was a song about hotels in California," Jack says. "That's a direct quote."

"Never trust an Eagles fan," Eugene says, with a sage nod. "So music's a deal breaker for you?"

"I don't mind a difference in taste. But no taste?" he shrugs again. "I, ah, run a radio station on the Abel campus. I can't imagine not caring about what I'm listening to. There'd be weeks in undergrad where I pretty much couldn't eat because I'd blown everything in my account on albums."

"That sounds familiar," Eugene chuckles, and Jack can't believe how friendly he is, given he's in emergency right now because of him. He's got a good laugh, too, clear and genuine, and it would be really great if he could stop looking so damn attractive with his t-shirt still plastered to his chest and his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles. They're in fluorescent lighting, for God's sake. It's not right.

"What sort of thing do you listen to?" He's half hoping Eugene will say something terrible, like he's only interested in late-period Madonna or bands with the word 'Wolf' in their names. 

"Um, a lot of Canadian stuff, mostly," is what he actually says, with a shrug of his own. "Kind of like a taste of home, I guess?"

"Oh, so that's the accent?"

"Yeah, I'm from Victoria, out on the Island," he frowns. "That doesn't mean anything to you, right?"

"Nope," Jack says. A nurse walks past them, face practically buried in her clipboard. You'd think broken bones would get a bit more priority than this. "What's Canadian music sound like?" 

"Here," Eugene fishes around in his pocket and pulls out a battered, old model iPod — the kind with the click wheel instead of the screen — knotted headphones wrapped around it. "There's a Canadian playlist in it. If you're staying, you should have something to do. Not that you have to stay, if you don't want. It doesn't even hurt that much any more." 

"Least I can do," Jack says, popping a headphone in and holding the other out to him. "Literally, the least. You want one?"

"Kind of a stretch, isn't it?"

It's not a 'no,' he notices. "That's easily fixed." He gets up from his seat, resettles so he's sitting on Eugene's other side, his back brushing Jack's shoulder. "See? Problem solved."

"So it is," Eugene gives him a bit of a smile and leans back slightly, letting Jack take some of his weight as he slips in the headphone.

They're still sitting like that nearly an hour and a half later, when the nurse finally comes over and leads Eugene away to the back for his x-ray.

\---

"Did you download more lolcats on your phone?" Maxine asks him over lunch two days later. 

Jack glances up from his screen to find both her and Paula staring at him. "What?"

"You've checked your phone five times already, Jack," Paula says. 

"And you're smiling," Maxine adds. "Which is a good look for you, but kind of weird these days. If you have lolcats, share."

Jack snaps the phone shut and tucks it back in his pocket before she can reach across the table. "It's nothing. I'm just texting a sick friend."

The two of them exchange a look over their sandwiches.

"Uh huh," says Maxine, raising her eyebrows.

"Is it that friend of yours from the bar?" Paula asks. "With the broken ankle?"

"Sprain," Jack corrects, aware that he's probably turning red. "It's just a really deadly sprain, okay? No one broke anyone's bones here."

The phone buzzes against his leg, and he fishes it out without thinking.

_**TO JACK 12:23 p.m.** Maybe starting to vibrate. send help._

_**TO EUGENE 12:23 p.m.** We talked about this. There's caffeine in the pills already. Stop drinking the coffee!_

_**TO JACK 12:24 p.m.** but it's THERE._

He looks up again and Paula is leaning forward, chin cupped on one hand, while Maxine's got her arms crossed, smirking. Yeah, he's been made.

"You like this one," Maxine says. 

"Yes, as friends do," Jack is pretty sure he's tomato coloured by now. "Because we're friends."

"It's sweet," Paula says. "You never smile like that any more."

"It's not like that," he protests. "This has nothing to do with horses. Or getting back on them."

Paula gives him a blank look, then turns to Maxine. "This is one of those things I don't want to know about, isn't it, sweetheart?"

"I just think Jack needs a little rebound, don't you?" 

"Oh," her face relaxes out again. "I see. I thought it was something from the radio show that I'd missed."

"Ew," Jack and Maxine say in near unison. 

The phone vibrates again, and all three of them stare at it. 

"Go on," Paula says, leaning across the table to pat him on the hand. "Tell him we say hello."

"Tell him we say you two should—"

"I'm not listening to either of you," Jack announces, then flips open the phone because he's weak willed and it's not like Eugene can hear what either of them are saying. The beauty of text messaging, really.

_**TO JACK 12:30 p.m**. If i'm not drinking coffee, what am i supposed to do all day?_

_**TO EUGENE 12:30 p.m**. Hopscotch?_

_**TO JACK 12:31 p.m.** Ha. Ha. Ha._

_**TO EUGENE 12:32 p.m.** Worth a shot._

He hesitates, thumbs hovering over the buttons for a few moments, then bangs out the next text as fast as he can before snapping the phone shut, tossing it down on the table and tearing into his sandwich with renewed vigour.

"Jack," Maxine says, "what did you just do?" 

"Nothing," he mumbles, around a bite of sandwich. "Absolutely nothing."

He sees her reach for the phone and gets a hand out to stop her, but that leaves Paula free to snatch it up. Couples are absolutely not fair to deal with. He's going to speak to the two of them about that, just as soon as he stops dying of embarrassment. 

_**TO EUGENE 12:32 p.m.** You want to get a drink later? I probably owe you one._

"He says yes, by the way," Paula says, after she's done cooing at the screen. 

Jack does not grin at her in response. He doesn't.

\---

Even using the cheap/mostly-not-shady matrix, Mullins is by far the worst pub in all of Abel. Boarded over windows out front, pawns shops on either side, plastic chairs and card tables inside and a persistent smell of years-old draft beer that makes him wrinkle his nose when he walks in.

But it is really, really cheap. More important, it's close enough to Eugene's apartment that he only looks a little winded when he comes clomping through the front door on his crutches a few minutes after Jack's arrived.

"Hate these things," he says by way of greeting, and drops heavily onto one of the chairs, dragging another one over to set his bad foot on. 

"Have I said sorry again, recently?" Jack asks, with a wince. 

Eugene waves him off. "What are we drinking?"

He considers if for a moment, then flashes on the first time they met. Well, that he remembers, anyway. And maybe it's a little dangerous, but he likes the way Eugene's face cracks into a smile when he says, "whiskey?"

"Perfect."

The girl behind the bar seems familiar, somehow, though Jack can't place her until she's swung around and set two glasses and a mostly full bottle on the counter in front of him. 

"Oh, you're Sam's friend, aren't you?" 

She blinks at him, reaching up to tuck a lock of dark hair that's burst free of her ponytail back into place. "Sorry?"

"Sam, you know. He covers your track team for Radio Abel." He's pretty sure he's got her placed right. She certainly looks like the girl who's been making Sam forget how to walk in a straight line every time they've passed her in the quad this term.

"Oh, him," there's something weird about her expression when she says it, but Jack knows better than to get into the ins and outs of undergraduate romance. He's sure Sam's got it sorted. Well, maybe. Stranger things have happened.

He sets the bottle on the unsteady little table with a flourish, and Eugene pours out two equal measures, scooting one across towards him. 

"You're good at that," Jack says, tipping his glass in Eugene's direction for a moment before taking a long sip. 

"I do have some experience." He leans his head back a little as he drinks, and Jack tries not to stare at the line of his throat. 

_Friends_ , he reminds himself. _Friends._

"So, how's someone from the far side of Canada end up in a place like Abel, anyway?" he asks, around another sip.

"You looked it up," Eugene says, a little surprised.

"After we got out of the hospital the other night," he admits. It's not weird. He'd been curious. That's all. "It sort of looks like mini-England, actually."

"Pretty much," Eugene rolls his eyes a little. "My mom was from here, originally. I think she picked Victoria just so she wouldn't get homesick."

"It's a tracing your roots thing, then? Being here?" 

"Not really. I guess?" he takes another drink, then fiddles with the glass instead of putting it back down. "I wanted a change of pace after university. I'm a dual citizen, so. Figured England was far enough away to make a good one."

"And you picked Abel, of all places?" It's a nice town, if you're a student. But Jack can't imagine living here of his own free will, without the station to keep him distracted.

"Janine and my mom went to school together. She gave me a job and mostly doesn't try to kill me if I go backpacking for a week every couple months."

Jack thinks about the woman from the bar, and the gold-standard glare he'd gotten as he helped Eugene out of the Township the other night. "On a scale of one to murder, how much does your boss hate me right now?"

"She's just kind of prickly. Give her a month, and she probably won't pull the shotgun on you when you walk into the bar."

"Comforting," Jack says, and pours them another round.

\---

There's a hole in Eugene's t-shirt, where the fabric's come away from the elastic at its neck. And they've been talking about something interesting, Jack's sure of it, but all of a sudden he cannot stop staring at the little bit of Eugene's shoulder visible through the gap.

He kind of wants to touch it. 

Kind of a lot, actually.

He takes another drink instead, and tries to re-focus on the conversation. They've dropped the level of whiskey in the bottle by almost half, between them, and Eugene's face is flushed across the table, eyes bright as he says something about Tom Waits that Jack has lost the ability to follow. Which is a bit of a shame, because talking to him about music is brilliant. More fun than Jack's had in ages.

God, though, he is unfairly gorgeous. 

And there is a fair-to-middling chance that Jack is far drunker than he meant to get.

"And you've stopped listening," Eugene says, using a crutch to poke Jack in the leg. "Sorry, I have strong feelings about _Down by Law_ , I guess."

"No, sorry, it's not you," he's blushing again, he knows it. Fair skin is a curse and shows bloody everything. "The whiskey might've gotten ahead of me for a second, there."

"We should probably cut ourselves off," unless it's his imagination, Eugene sounds reluctant when he says it. "Not sure what's going to happen if I'm too drunk to get up stairs on crutches."

"That is a good point," Jack says, to keep from saying something stupid. Stupider. "An important point. Vital point."

"Crucial," Eugene suggests.

"Essential."

"Critical."

"Necessary."

"Imperative." 

"Considerable," that one takes longer than it should to come up with, and he stumbles to his feet, fumbling for his wallet. "Right, you might want to watch out when you stand up."

"Oh, you weren't kidding," Eugene says a moment later, and Jack puts a hand out to steady him.

Tactical error. Eugene's shirt is washed thin and soft against his palm, and Jack can feel the heat of him through it, the line of his spine. When he slides his hand a bit lower, his fingers touch actual skin, where the tee's ridden up slightly at the back.

And oh holy fuck, Jack needs to be touching him everywhere. Right now, if possible, okay, thanks so much.

"Out," Eugene grits out. "Outside. Now."

The door's still banging shut behind them when Jack shoves him against the wall of the pub and crushes their bodies together. Eugene's mouth opens against his and one of his crutches hits the ground with a clatter as he brings a hand up to grip at the back of Jack's head. He tastes like whiskey and heat and Jack hooks a thumb in that stupid hole in his shirt and traces along the line of his shoulder. 

"My apartment's six blocks from here," he says, and feels Eugene grin back against his lips.

"Mine's two."

\---

Eugene's place is closer, but it's up three flights of stairs. Jack has no idea how they manage it. Most of the walk is a blur, and when he tries he can't even picture the streets between Mullins and Eugene's building at all. 

The apartment's tiny. One of those little studio jobs, the bed shoved up against the back wall, with the kitchen in the opposite corner. Eugene ignores the switch by the door in favour of a lamp near the bed, flooding the corner of the room in orange light, but effectively throwing most of the rest of it into shadow.

Jack watches him ease down onto the bed, dropping the crutches on the floor and kicking them under the frame with his good leg. Watches him pull his t-shirt up and over his head, flashing Jack a loaded smile when his face reemerges. "Coming over?"

He doesn't need to be asked twice. He leaves his own shirt somewhere in the middle of the room, flounders with his belt buckle as he watches Eugene work his own jeans down his hips to puddle on the carpet, carefully extracting his tensor-wrapped ankle from the fabric. 

Jack's belt hits the floor with a clatter and actually looks to bounce slightly, which gets him another grin. That sends a flash of heat to his belly, and has him pressing Eugene down onto the mattress even as he's still slithering out of his trousers. 

His skin is fever-hot and flushed against Jack's and for a minute he can't figure out where to put his hands first. Then Eugene's tilting up to kiss him, a hand at his lower back to pull them close together, and it doesn't matter so much where he starts. 

They're neither of them sober, and not kissing like it either. It's all teeth and tongues and bitten lips, and Jack can feel Eugene's chest heaving under his as he skims his hands down his sides, over his hips. Undressed, he's on the lean side, all hipbones and compact muscle. Jack walks his fingers up spread thighs, and Eugene pulls out of the kiss with a groan to worry at a spot on the edge of Jack's jaw.

He tilts his head to the side, eyes falling shut at a scrape of teeth. Smooths a hand down the trail of hair under Eugene's navel and feels muscle twitch. Slides it into his underwear, and gets a full, glorious shudder out of it and a hot, wet exhale over his pulse point. 

"So hot," he thinks he says, blood pounding in his ears too hard to hear for sure. He gets a hand wrapped round Eugene's cock, works his way into a slow rhythm, and feels blunt fingernails dig into his back.

"Oh fuck," Eugene's saying, low and filthy in his ear. Just that, over and over, his forehead pressed against Jack's shoulder as he curls in around him, hips bucking. 

It's good — beyond good, really — but just needs one more thing. He twists the fingers of his free hand into Eugene's hair, pulling his head back up for a kiss maybe a little harder than he needs to. And Eugene makes just the most ridiculous noise he's ever heard, shocked and pleased and guttural in equal measure, and comes in Jack's hand, hard. 

And if that's not the hottest thing Jack's ever seen then, well, he can't remember the other thing right now.

"Holy shit," he says, and Eugene's gaping up at him, still shivering through the aftershocks.

"So," he swallows, and then lets out a soft, surprised laugh. "So, I guess that's a thing that works for me."

Jack gives his hair another little tug, and Eugene's eyes slip shut as his head tilts back. 

"Never tried that before?"

"Always kept it short before," he sounds a bit dazed now. "Your funny British electrical sockets fried my clippers." 

Thank God and queen and country for British electrical sockets, Jack decides, then and there.

"You know," he says, sitting back on his heels to steal a Kleenex from the box on the bedside table, then shimmy out of his own boxers. "That probably means we should try that again." 

He doesn't get a verbal response, but Eugene dragging him down by the shoulders tells him pretty much everything he needs to know. 

\---

The Radio Abel kids are terrible at security. Sure, Sara hadn't been expecting much of an issue when she showed up in the basement office at 11 p.m., but she'd assumed there would at least be someone on the front desk to slip by. A locked door somewhere. A password-protected computer, at the very least.

Instead, she strolls through the still-open door to the station offices, into the manager's office, and jiggles the mouse to rouse the computer from sleep, to find herself staring at his open email program. 

Jesus, she probably didn't even need to bother dressing in black.

She types 'greenshoot' into the search bar at the top of the program, and a series of emails from earlier in the week pop up, all from the station's main account. Nothing received, someone's been a bit smart about all this. But all the outgoing messages are still there. So not too, too smart.

**TO:** netrophil@gmail.com

**FROM:** radio@abel.ac.uk

**SUBJECT:** RE:Project Greenshoot

> looked into your allegations. seems promising, but we'll need to meet in person to confirm. are you willing to talk on the record?

What allegations? She frowns, scrolls through the rest. More shadowy stuff. Meetings set up, references to other sources, a thank you letter at one point, after what sounds like it must have been one of their first meetings. Cute.

And then, back near the start of the chain, there it is. A single message with a previous reply still in place.

**TO:** radio@abel.ac.uk

**FROM:** netrophil@gmail.com

**SUBJECT:** NO NAMES

> WE ARE NETROPHIL. WE SPEAK FOR ALL CONCERNED STUDENTS. WILL PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF GUILTY PARTIES. GREENSHOOT GOES TOO FAR. SMOKE IT OUT. 020 3603 1683.

She scribbles it down on a nearby piece of paper, then glances over her shoulder. Still no sign of motion from the hallway. It's entirely possible she's the only person down here. God, she hopes radio idiocy's not contagious.

Another minute passes. Still no sign of anyone, and Sarah shakes her head in disgust and drags the station phone across the desk towards her. No sense wasting cell phone minutes if there's a landline here. 

The line seems to ring forever, and she's certain she'll go to voicemail when there's a scuffling and a deep, distorted voice coming through the speaker.

"Why are you calling now?"

Well, that's certainly odd.

"This is Sara Smith, from the _Abel Citizen_ ," she says, clipped and professional, like she's not talking to the voice of a serial killer from some sort of crime show. "I'm calling about Project Greenshoot."

"What about it?"

And it does grate a bit, being so in the dark on this. "What is it?"

"Exactly," says the voice. "We'll be in touch."

There's a click, and then Sara's sitting there, holding a dead line to her ear.

"Seriously, what the fuck," she sighs, and hangs up her end as well.

She's just putting the desk to rights (though it's highly unlikely anyone will be able to tell she's been here, given the mess of the place) when her phone chimes in her pocket. 

A new email.

**TO:** s.j.smith@able.ac.uk

**FROM:** netrophil@gmail.com

**SUBJECT:** WHAT IS PROJECT GREENSHOOT

> BE ON THE SOUTH COMMONS IN 10 MINUTES. THERE'S A PACKAGE FOR YOU BY THE GURKHAN STATUE.
> 
> SMOKE IT OUT.

Sara's head jerks up, and she stares round the darkened office wildly. Still no sign of anyone. She'd have heard the noise. Of course she would have.

Her email's in the _Citizen_  masthead. They must have looked her up. Searched her byline to make sure she was legitimate. That must be it.

She thinks about the distorted voice on the other end of the line again and doesn't let herself shiver. 

Pulling out the emergency can of mace she keeps in the bottom of her purse, on the other hand, is just good common sense.

\---

Arthur Gurkhan's statue is just outside the library, set awkwardly in the space in front of Abel's library building. During the daytime, it's a navigational mess around the sculpture's base. Sara's seen students collide there dozens of times, trying to get out the library doors with too many books, or cutting through the commons on their way to the science buildings. She's been meaning to write something on it, actually. Probably needs to make a note somewhere, to remember to look at it once this is all over. 

This time of night, though, the area round the statue is dark and shadowed, the moon only just visible over the edge of the arts centre to the west. There are streetlights, but it doesn't feel near enough right now. Sara fishes in her bag again, pulls her phone out for a flashlight and scans the area.

"Anyone there?" she calls.

Nothing.

She edges closer, across the car-less street and onto the edge of the concrete. Still no sign of anyone. She draws in a deep breath, in case she needs to scream, and ducks round the corner of the statue. 

Sitting just on top of the base, between Ghurkan's feet, is a file folder, banded shut. Sara snatches it up, glances round again, and finally lets out the breath.

"Still no one there?"

More silence.

"Don't think we're not going to talk once I've looked at this," he voice echos over the empty concrete, and she'd feel a bit silly if she wasn't so on edge. "I've got your number now."

This time, she doesn't bother waiting for a response before stalking off.

\---

There's a noise coming from somewhere in the room. Some sort of ringing, beeping, thing. 

What's the word? Alarm. Phone alarm. His phone.

He opens his eyes, and oh God is that ever a mistake, as the headache he hadn't been awake enough to notice slams into him, forcing his eyes shut. Jack's entire body feels cement-heavy, and there's little spots of light dancing behind his closed eyelids now. _Don't throw up_ , he chants to himself. _Do not throw up._

"Oh god make the noise stop," Eugene whispers behind him.

Jack drops an arm off the edge of the bed, rooting on the floor blind until he snags a pair of jeans. His, thankfully, and he shoves a hand into his pocket and flips the phone open just enough to shut the damn thing up. "Sorry."

"What time is it?" Eugene shifts behind him, spooning up against his back and pressing his face into the space between Jack's shoulder blades. 

"Eight," he tries to remember if he looked at the time on the clock before they finally passed out last night, and gets a blurry sort of memory of seeing the digital display blink over to 2 a.m. while he was going through the nightstand for condoms. So, definitely up later than that.

"So much hangover," Eugene says, whining low in the back of his throat. 

"So much," Jack agrees. His head is splitting and his mouth tastes of glue and he's pretty sure he's not going to be able to manage the walk home without throwing up. It shouldn't feel so comfortable, then, to lean back against Eugene, to feel the fit of their bodies together and stroke a hand down the arm he wraps around Jack's chest. 

"You need to go?" Eugene asks, eventually, after they've lain there in silence long enough that Jack's nearly drifted off again.

"I do," he sighs. "Got to draft up station schedules, and there's a board report due in a couple days. And it's bad manners to vomit in someone's house when you're a guest, right?"

"Only if you don't clean it up." Eugene presses a kiss to the back of his neck, then pulls away with a sigh. "You want to do this again some time?"

"Not the last four glasses of whiskey," Jack says with a strangled laugh. "But the rest of it? Yeah."

"Cool," Eugene says, and Jack doesn't begrudge him the yawn that follows it. "Going back to sleep now, okay?"

"Call you later," Jack promises, dragging himself upright to put on his pants while Eugene pulls a pillow over his head and curls up with his back to him. When Jack glances over, it's too, too tempting to just slide in with him, to press his face into that mess of brown hair and sleep to noon. He settles for leaning down instead, just long enough to kiss the curve of Eugene's shoulder where it's still visible below the pillow. 

Outside, the sun is awful and too bright, and Jack keeps his head down, watching the pavement lurch under him as he stumbles along on jelly legs, hands jammed in his pockets, mad grin plastered across his face. 

Yes, he would definitely like to do that again.

He closes his eyes and lets his forehead rest against the cool metal of his front door as he digs his keys out of his pocket and jams them at the lock. It takes about five tries, but when the lock finally turns he practically lets himself fall through the open door. Showering is going to be so, so good today. Brushing his teeth might even top that.

"Jack?"

He stops dead, still in the doorway. Jerks his head up, and that's a mistake that sets his vision swimming again as he stares at the figure sitting on his couch, hands clenched in his lap, shoulders hunched. Takes in familiar, sandy hair and a cleft chin and wide, bulky shoulders and, oh God, he might end up throwing up after all.

"Lionel?" he gets out.

"Yeah. We should talk."

\---

The bus drops her off two blocks west of the house pinpointed on the map, and Sara pulls the printout from the file folder to plan the best route of approach. 

It's a student neighbourhood, so her presence shouldn't attract much attention. Certainly not on a weekday morning, when most of the occupants of the area are either in class or sleeping off cram sessions or ill-advised partying. In her sweats and t-shirt, she should pass for any old late-morning jogger. 

Based on the satellite photo, there should be an alley she can head through that will take her in back of the property. She scans the printout again, before shoving it in her backpack and putting in her headphones. No music actually on, but more camouflage in case anyone does spot her on the run.

The house is the second in from a corner, high garden wall blocking most of the back view. From this side, it looks quiet. Window shades drawn, no obvious lights on, no noise coming from the back yard. She jogs out of the alley, dropping into a walk as she rounds the corner, pretending to fiddle with her iPod. 

The curtains on the front windows are drawn shut as well, but there's a car outside, parked unevenly against the curb, and a couple bikes chained up against the wrought iron fence at the front. A line of peace flags, faded by the sun and rain, flutter from where they've been strung between two upper-storey windows.  

It's doesn't look like a grow op, but Sara supposes that's the point of the thing. 

There's something about this whole scenario she doesn't like. Concerned students with voice scramblers should have bigger things to worry about than a few biology majors growing weed in their basement. 

But other than some grainy cell phone pics of what looked like several rows of plants under high-powered lights and this address, the file was light on details. Unless you counted the Netrophil Manifesto, which had been written in all capital letters, and which didn't seem to amount to much more than a lot of pretentious quotes skimmed from someone's first year philosophy textbook and some 'we the people' type rambling.

Maybe she'd been right the first time, and someone at the station was having a bit of fun at her expense. Wasting her time and trying to scare her. The whole thing seemed a bit high-level for that Sam kid to be pulling off on his own, but maybe Jack, or whatever his name was, was in on it. Radio DJs probably had a lot of free time, after all.

Most likely, the house isn't even a grow op. Probably just full of normal grad students, who wouldn't be terribly happy to be named in some sort of half-cocked expose. 

She's come to a standstill, staring at the front door. The whole situation is ridiculous. Time to figure it out one way or another.

She unhooks her headphones, places the iPod back in her pocket, marches through the gate and up to the front door, and raps it hard with her knuckles. Her heart is starting to speed up in her chest, but that's probably good for effect. She's not ever tried to buy marijuana before, but certainly there would be some nerves involved in the first transaction you have with a stranger you've only heard about through a friend of a friend.

And if it turns out she's off base, well, it's a student neighbourhood. She can just claim she's got the wrong address.

There's the sound of feet pounding on hardwood, and a girl throws the door open.

Sara blinks, and takes a step back without meaning to. "Nadia?" More footsteps, and another figure emerges out of a back room behind her. "Lem?"  

"Sara?" The _Citizen_ 's co-editors are staring back at her with as much confusion as she feels. 

"What are you doing here?" Nadia asks, finally.

The whole situation has her so off balance, that maybe it's understandable that when she opens her mouth what comes out is, "trying to buy pot?"

She's expecting confused looks, maybe laughter. Instead, Nadia grins wide, exposing the slight gap in her front teeth. "Smith, I'd no idea. You always seemed so uptight."

Behind her, Lem's smiling too. "No scoops to throw off our front page?"

"Nothing like that," she say, voice sounding faint in her ears. No. No, this is crazy. This must be some sort of prank.

"Well, come on in," he says, stepping back and throwing an arm wide. "Reporters get the employee discount."

\---

"We should talk," Lionel Van Ark, cheating bastard boyfriend extraordinaire, had said.

So, instead, Jack had marched straight past him into the toilet, turned on the shower and had a minor panic attack in private.

When he finally reappears, it's in the same grotty clothing he was wearing when he came in, but he's clean at least and slightly more clearheaded than before. Lionel is still sitting on the couch in that same, defensive position, as though he hasn't moved an inch in the quarter of an hour Jack's spent freaking out. 

There are a lot of things he'd like to say, starting with _why the hell are you here?_  and going downhill from there. Instead, what comes out is, "I didn't think you'd have held onto your key."

"I suppose you're wondering why I'm here," Lionel says, and Jack feels something inside him break.

"No, actually, I'm wondering where you were a month ago," he snaps. He's starting to regret not having invested in much furniture beyond the couch, because the only other places left to sit are next to Lionel, or on the coffee table. He jams his hands in his pockets to keep from doing something pathetic, like wrapping his arms around himself, and tries not to fidget. "I called, and I texted. I even dropped a letter in your bloody box in the Econ office. Where the hell have you been?"

"That girl at the _Citizen_  came to see me the day before the story went to press. I panicked." He shrugs. "Been at my parents' up north. I turned my phone off when I left."

"You don't get to shrug," his voice is coming out funny. Thin and high and wretched. God, please don't let him start crying. "Nearly two years of dating, and you leave me to find out in the fucking school paper. Anything would've been better. I'd rather have walked in on you with one of your girls in my apartment, because at least then you'd have said _something_  to me after." 

His eyes are burning, and Jack turns sharp on his heel, like there's something on the opposite wall that badly needs his attention. 

"I know," his voice is soft, apologetic. "I've been seeing someone, a therapist, I mean. My mum found one for me. She's... been helping me work some of this out."

"Fantastic for you," Jack says, sniffling now. 

"I owe you an apology," Lionel says, acting like he hasn't heard him. It sounds rehearsed, somehow, what he's saying. Maybe he practised it on the coach ride back from his mum's. "You deserve a chance to say whatever you need to say to me. And I should have given you that sooner."

"I've got work," it comes out pleading, and he can feel the hangover-headache still booming in his temples. Crying's not going to make that any better, that's for sure. "And you're sitting in my living room at 9 in the morning. This is — I really just can't deal with any of this right now."

He glances over, and Lionel seems a bit thrown, actually. Like he was expecting Jack to just go along with whatever he was saying and agree to a heart-to-heart immediately. Christ, even if he weren't hungover, Lionel ought to know better. There are days Jack can't remember his own name before his second cup of coffee. Morning's not his time. 

"I'll take you to dinner, then," Lionel suggests, brightening. "Yes, that's good. Neutral territory, right?" 

Now that definitely sounds like therapy talk. Jack pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "Sure, whatever. I'm going to go get dressed. Can you—" he falters, can't bring himself to throw him out, somehow. "I just need some time alone."

"I'll pick you up at 7," Lionel says, and Jack flees the room before he can get up off the couch.

\---

When Sam opens the door, Sara looks a mess. She's red faced and sweaty, little wisps of blonde hair escaping her ponytail on all sides, and she's clutching a tray of coffee cups white-knuckled. 

"You little shit," she says, and shoves a foot in front of the doorjamb before Sam can close it again. "I need your help. Is that what you wanted me to say in all this? Fine, I've said it."

"Sorry, what?" he can't figure out her expression. She's glaring at him, but there's something lurking just under the surface that he thinks might be excitement. Maybe that's the look she gets before she murders people with her reporter's notebook?

"You knew I'd find out it was our people," she says. "The _Citizen_ 's behind Project Greenshoot. Goes all the way to the bloody top. I can't believe I've let them run my byline."

"Wait, Project Greenshoot's real?" he blurts, and there's any remaining shred of cover blown. He'd really thought Skoobs had been making most of that up. 

"I went through our back issues. Lem and Nadia have been exposing campus pot dealers all semester as part of an ongoing series," Sara runs a hand through her hair, tugging more bits free from her hair elastic in the process. 

"Weeding out the competition?" Sam says with a grin, and if Sara gets the joke she completely ignores it. 

"We've got to expose them."

"Oh, it's we now, is it?" He's trying really hard for steely resolve, but her eyes are shining now and Sam's getting a wave of secondhand excitement he isn't sure what to do with. "You sure serious journalism's going to fit in with all the hip hop songs?"

"It's going to have to," she says. "Would you let me in already?"

"Depends," now he is grinning. "One of those coffees for me?"

"Got you a vanilla latte. Figured you'd want something with sugar."

"In that case," he swings the door wide and steps back, and she passes over the coffee on the way in. It must have come from one of those places where they ask for names for the cups, because scrawled on one side in black sharpie is 'Netrophil.' "Um, Sara?"

"What?" 

"This is sweet and all, I guess, but I'm not Netrophil."

That stops her in her tracks, two steps into the room. She swings back around, and for a second Sam thinks she might actually look a bit freaked out, but the flicker in her expression is gone as quickly as it appears. "Who is it?"

"Him," he points to the back of the dorm room, where Skoobs is mostly asleep under a nest of blankets, only the top of his head still poking out. "Oi, Netrophil, you've got an admirer here."

A yawn, and the rest of Skoobs' head emerges. "Hey Sasha."

"Sara," she and Sam end up chorusing.

"Brilliant," he looks over at them, eyes heavy lidded and considering for a moment, then asks, "hey, if you went to the house, you didn't happen to pick up any product, did you?"

Sara fixes both of them with a withering stare, then sighs and pulls her backpack off her shoulders and unzips the front pocket. 

"Holy shit, man," Sam blurts. "Did you buy in bulk?"

"Employee discount," she sighs again, which in Sam's opinion is exactly the wrong reaction to something like that.

"I like her," says Skoobs, "can we keep her?"

"Sam," Sara says. "Journalism?"

"Right, right," he waves her towards the bed. "Make yourself comfortable. I'm just going to, um, go wet down a towel for the door and then we can get started."

"You're what? Why?"

Across the room, Skoobs pulls the bong out from behind the couch, setting it on the floor in front of him with a bit more clatter than necessary. "Shame to waste a day's shopping isn't it?"

"Idiots," Sara says, but it's clear she's not really talking to either of them. "I've cast my lot in with idiots."

"Idiots with airwaves," Sam reminds her as he pulls a towel from the laundry hamper. "Lovely, accessible, investigative journalism-accepting airwaves."

"I think I hate you."

"The public has a right to know," he trills back over his shoulder on his way out the door to the communal bathroom down the hall. And damn if that isn't hands down the best moment of the whole term.

\---

Pandora Haze is all chrome finish and £12 cocktails, and Jack has no idea what Lionel's thinking, taking him here. Too trendy by half, and the way it's set up — all tiny tables, clustered too-close together for the space — doesn't afford them any privacy at all.

Then again, maybe that's intentional on his part. Harder for your dinner partner to have a screaming, crying fit at you when there's 60 other people in hearing range. Jack could do without another round of public embarrassment. 

He waves off the offer of a drink, and stares hard into his water glass, trying to blank out everything. He shouldn't have come. Should have tracked down Maxine and Paula and hidden in their apartment for the next couple days, until Lionel got the hint and went back home, taking his important conversations and his closure with him. But Maxine's got a late training shift at the hospital and Paula's probably using the free night to hole up in her lab in the science centre, and Jack's not sure he could've faced the thought of telling either of them what's going on anyway.

So instead it's awkward silence and the weight of Lionel staring at him across the table, like he's waiting for something, though Jack has no clue what it could be. 

It's not until the server has taken their orders and disappeared again that Lionel finally reaches across the table and sets a hand over Jack's. He jerks back at the contact, elbow just barely missing the water tumbler, but crashing off a spoon instead and sending it to the floor with a clatter. 

"Don't," he snaps. 

Lionel gives him a look, like he's disappointed. Like Jack's disappointed _him_ , somehow. And it shouldn't — it shouldn't work as well as it does. But there's a stab of guilt in his chest all of a sudden, and he nearly puts his hand back on the table before coming to his senses. 

"I'm sorry," Lionel says, finally, and Jack digs his nails into his palms, willing himself to keep a straight face.  

"Thanks," he bites out and then, because he can't help it, "why? If things were that bad, why not just break up with me and be done with it?"

"It wasn't you," and there's that rehearsed look again. "It wasn't about them, either really. Not the sex part, anyway. My therapist thinks I've got some control issues to work through."

"No shit," Jack says. "Actually, let's skip the 'why' bit."

"It's just, they way they looked at—"

"Skipping," Jack says, too loud, and sees a few heads turn in their direction. "Just skipping along to the end of this whole bit."

"But," Lionel looks a bit lost again, and the fine thread of patience Jack's been clinging to is starting to fray. 

"Why are you even here?"

"I," he sort of chokes on it, "I miss you."

That is... not what he was expecting. Except the hip little restaurant, the hand holding attempt, it all makes a bit of sense now. Horrible, awful sense.

"You, ah, you don't think this is a date, do you?" _Say no_ , he's chanting in his head, _laugh at me, roll your eyes, anything. Say no._

"I know I've made some mistakes," he's whining a bit now.

"At least six of them, by the paper's count."

"Would you stop that? I'm trying to make things right between us again, and you keep throwing it back in my face," it comes out sulky, like Jack's told him he doesn't want to have dinner because cricket finals are on. Like every bloody time in their relationship things didn't go his way. 

Jack tries to remember why he's missed this and comes up empty. And that hurts worse, somehow, than anything Lionel's likely to say to him tonight. Two years. Two Goddamned years, and he can't remember why.

Hell.

"I think I've got somewhere I'm supposed to be right now," he says softly, pushing back from the table. "Like, anywhere else."

"Just like that, you want to throw away two years?"

That almost stops him short. "I didn't. But you already did."

He wishes he were angrier. He should be furious. He should be throwing this in Lionel's face, and this exit should be the best part of all this. But as he's threading his way through tables and steadfastly ignoring every other person in the room, he just feels a bit sick. Tired, too. So damn tired.

His phone buzzes about a block from Pandora.

_**TO JACK 7:20 p.m.** Did you bite the back of my knee last night? got a bruise i can't account for._

Eugene. 

Oh.

He shoves the phone back in his pocket, and keeps walking.

\---

He knocks, and it feels like it takes forever for the door to swing open. Long enough that he starts to think this is a terrible idea. Too soon, too fast, definitely too forward. 

Then Eugene's staring at him, listing slightly to one side as he leans into the door frame for support. "This is a surprise," he says, but he's smiling.

"I think I just broke up with my ex-boyfriend," Jack says, not bothering with any sort of preamble. May as well lay the cards on the table now that he's here. Get all the stupid shit right out there in the open up front. 

Eugene blinks at him, and Jack can see him going over the sentence in his head, working out the implications. "That's," he pauses, mouth twisting up at one corner as he looks for a word, "weird." 

"You have no idea," it comes out around a laugh, and it's an honest shock and such a relief he has to put a hand out for balance himself. 

"You want to come in for a bit?" 

"It's probably bad timing," he says, because it's true and if he really is laying everything out that means getting through all of it. "The guy I just... _re_ -broke up with, apparently. We were together for two years. Two years of my life and it didn't — just, so much bad stuff there. I'm not very. That is. It just happened and I should be doing rebound things, apparently. I don't know. I shouldn't."

Well, that could have come out a bit better. 

"There's a 'but' there, right?" Eugene asks. "I'm not totally sure you were speaking English just now, but it kind of sounded like there was a 'but.'"

"But," Jack says, and looks at him. Really looks. Eugene's got this soft little smile on his face, that same look in his eyes Jack remembers seeing from the floor of the bar. Kind of surprised, but not really unhappy. A little fond, even, under it all. 

And maybe it won't work. Maybe it's too soon. Maybe he ought to go with the whole rebound thing. Let Maxine fix him up some more, keep this thing between them light, just funny texts and the occasional drunken fling. Maybe it's a terrible idea. 

But at least, if this ends, he'll have a pretty good idea of why he bothered to start it in the first place. 

Maybe that counts for more. Nothing to do but put it out there too, and see.

"But you're making me kind of happy right now," he says. "I like that. I — I like you. And I would like to come in, yeah."

"When you put it like that," Eugene's tone is teasing, but before he turns away Jack can see he's gone a bit pink in the cheeks. "You want a cup of tea or something?"

"Tea would be brilliant," Jack says, and lets the door swing shut behind them. 

\---

"Sam," Sara calls, jogging across the track field towards him with a wave. 

"Sara," he waves back, then puts his hand down quickly to try to keep the tray of coffees he's holding from tipping sideways. He settles in on the bleachers, and she sets down next to him, reaching across his lap for her Americano. "So, I hear someone got a visit from the cops a couple nights ago?"

"Mm, heard something like that too," she says, voice mock-innocent and not very convincing. "According to the _Abel Daily News_ , there's been 140 plants recovered."

"Jesus," Sam moans, because clearly they should've made a few more evidence-collecting trips before broadcasting. Between Greenshoot and the bust, he's got a feeling things are going to be pretty thin on campus for the next couple weeks. At least Sara's haul should be good for a few more days. Though if Skoobs keeps inviting her over when Sam's at the station, he might not get in on much of it. 

"All of us at the paper got a memo this morning," she says, taking the lid off her coffee to blow on it. "They're shutting us down for the rest of the term. Dean de Santa said she wants to make sure nothing else is dirty before she lets the rest of us back in."

"You," Sam frowns, peers at her out of the corner of his eye. "You don't sound upset. Why don't you sound upset? We tricked you into destroying your own publication. You're supposed to be punching me right now."

"Oh, make no mistake," she says, voice still light. "I'm going to have my revenge on you for your part in this little stunt. But radio — radio _journalism_ , that is  — it's a bit brilliant."

Sam feels a smile start on his face, and there is a slight but growing possibility getting his revenge wasn't the best part of the year after all. "There's an open slot right now on the schedule," he says. "Right round the dinner hour, just after Maxine's thing. Would be a good time for a weekly news show. Something in-depth."

She looks at him, considering, "You think so?"

"You're going to need a producer, though," he says. "Someone to help you find your way around the sound boards."

"I suppose I could put off my revenge for a term. Lull you into a false sense of security first."

"Deal," Sam says. Plenty of time to take up self defence, that way.

"One other thing," she holds up a hand, gesturing to someone across the field. "Don't read anything into this. I still hate you. But I'm feeling charitable today."

Over by the hurdles, a dark haired girl turns and jogs towards them. Sam's mouth goes very, very dry.

"Alice," Sara calls, when she's about halfway to them. "Got someone I'd like you to meet."


End file.
